Curated category
Former French colonies
- GrenadaGrenada is the smallest of the eastern Caribbean's spice nations, and yet its national flag carries a nutmeg. That single image hints at how much one tree…
- DominicaDominica is the only eastern Caribbean island that still has a population of pre-Columbian native Kalinago, the people who once called the island Wai'tu…
- DjiboutiDjibouti is a country in the Horn of Africa, and it carries the smallest population in mainland Africa. The 2024 census counted 1,066,809 people, recorded on…
- Burkina FasoBurkina Faso sits at the heart of West Africa, entirely landlocked, ringed by six countries and a history that refuses to be still.
- HaitiHaiti is the only country in history established by a slave revolt. On the 1st of January 1804, in the town of Gonaives, the leaders of the Haitian…
- Mandate for Syria and the LebanonThe Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon was born on the 29th of September 1923, when France was formally assigned control over a vast stretch of the eastern…
- CambodiaCambodia sits at a crossroads where ancient empire and modern catastrophe meet, a country of 17 million people whose story spans from one of the largest…
- MississippiMississippi sits at the southern edge of the American interior, a state whose name comes from an Ojibwe word meaning "great river." That river defines its…
- Saint-DomingueSaint-Domingue occupied the western third of Hispaniola, a Caribbean island, and it became the richest French colony in the Western Hemisphere, and arguably…
- LouisianaLouisiana sits at one of the most consequential crossroads in North America, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico.
- IllinoisIllinois sits at the geographic and demographic center of the United States, a state that political strategists and journalists have long called a…
- French MadagascarFrench Madagascar begins with a queen's signature. On the 17th of December 1885, Queen Ranavalona III signed a treaty that turned the island of Madagascar…